1533 Pope Clement VII excommunicates England's King Henry VIII.
1656 The first Quakers to land in Boston, Englishwomen Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, are arrested and jailed by the Puritan colonial government. After 5 weeks of imprisonment, they are deported back to Barbados.
1660 City of Vilnius is recaptured from its occupying Muscovite force by the army of the Grand Duchy led by Michał Kazimierz Pac.
…. On July 11th 1718, Howell Davis, a sailor from Milford Haven, was serving as mate on a ship named the Cadogan which was captured by pirate Edward England. Davis decided to become a pirate captain himself.
He was given command of the Cadogan and set sail for Brazil. Unfortunately for him, the crew mutinied en route and diverted the ship to Barbados, where Davis was imprisoned for piracy. On his release, he joined a pirate band based in New Providence in the Bahamas, but the Governor, Woodes Rogers, cleared them out. Davis fled on a sloop called The Buck, and along with six others, commandeered the vessel and set up his own den at Coxon's Hole.
Later, crossing the Atlantic, he harried shipping in the seas around his new base in the Cape Verde Islands. One of his prizes while there was the Saint James, a fine ship with 26 guns. He joined forces with Olivier Levasseur, a French pirate known as La Buse, and with Thomas Cocklyn, another pirate captain. This was a short-lived partnership which ended in a drunken brawl.
He took yet another ship, The Rover, which had 32 guns, sailed south to the Gold Coast where he captured several more rich vessels. One of his prisoners was Bartholomew Roberts, who was to become an even more famous pirate than his captor. Bartholomew, a fellow Welshman, became Black Bart or Barti Ddu. Davis finally overreached himself when he tried to pass himself off as a Royal Navy Pirate Hunter in order to kidnap the governor of Principe, a Portuguese island. The governor was not fooled, however, and ambushed Davis who was shot dead. His successor, Barti Ddu, retaliated later that same night by raiding and pillaging the island. ….
1848 London's Waterloo Station opens.
1859 Big Ben's second and current bell first chimes inside the Clock Tower
…. On 11th July 1905, an underground explosion at the Wattstown National Colliery at Wattstown, near Porth in the Rhondda Valley killed 120 men, with just one survivor. Three people were rescued from the mine, of whom, two would later die of their injuries. Only Matthew Davies lived. The subsequent investigation into the cause of the disaster concluded that the illegal use of blast material had caused the explosion. A message of condolence was sent by King Edward VII and many thousands of mourners joined the four-mile long funeral procession.
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The Newport Ship. It was announced on 11 July 2002 that a fifteenth-century ship had been discovered on the bank of the River Usk in Newport, during the building of the city's Riverfront Arts Centre. Items discovered in the 80-foot ship suggest that it was engaged in trade with Portugal in the fifteenth century.
11 Jul 1964 The Beatles appeared live on the ABC Television program "Lucky Stars (Summer Spin)", performing ‘A Hard Day's Night’, ‘Long Tall Sally’, ‘Things We Said Today’ and ‘You Can't Do That’. To avoid the crowd of fans waiting for them, The Beatles arrived at the Teddington Studio Centre by boat, traveling down the River Thames.
11 Jul 1971 The Bruce Springsteen Band opened for Humble Pie at the Sunshine In, Asbury Park in New Jersey. After the show an impressed Peter Frampton from Humble Pie, tells Springsteen and the band he'd like to have them open for them on a national basis. Frampton also said he would be happy to get the band an audition with his record label, A & M Records. For no logical reason Springsteen’s manager Tinker West declined both offers on the spot.
